The Best of World
Business Forum Worldwide 2023

Named by Fortune as one of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders, Peter H. Diamandis is the Founder and Executive Chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation, which leads the world in designing and operating large-scale incentive competitions. As an entrepreneur, Diamandis has started over 20 companies in the areas of longevity, space, venture capital and education.

He is co-founder of BOLD Capital Partners, a venture fund with $250M investing in exponential technologies, and co-founder and Vice Chairman of Celularity. Diamandis is also the bestselling author of Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think, BOLD: How to go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World and The Future is Faster Than You Think.

One of the world’s most admired athletes and the most decorated Olympian of all time, Phelps competed in his first Olympic Games at the age of 15. He has a total of 28 medals, 23 of which are gold. He is the first American male swimmer to earn a spot on five Olympic teams and at the 2016 Olympic Games, he became the oldest individual gold medalist in Olympic swimming history.

In 2008 Phelps created the Michael Phelps Foundation and in 2010, in collaboration with the Michael Phelps Swim School and KidsHealth.org, developed the “im” program that teaches children the importance of being active and healthy, focusing on the sport of swimming. Since retiring from competitive swimming, Phelps has also been actively involved in mental health awareness and promotion.

Former CEO and Chairman of PepsiCo Indra Nooyi is a business powerhouse, globally renowned for leading the company through a decade of tremendous growth and change. She was responsible for growing PepsiCo’s revenues from $35 billion when she became CEO, to $63.5 billion in 2017. She currently serves on the boards of Amazon, Philips, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and is an independent director of the International Cricket Council.

With multiple appearances in Forbes’ The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women, Fortune’s Most Powerful Women, and TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in The World, Nooyi is sought-out for her unparalleled business insights and empowering messages on leadership, inclusivity and change. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling book My Life in Full: Work, Family and Our Future.

Ginni Rometty is the former Chairman, President, and CEO of IBM. Under her leadership, IBM transformed, building a foundation for a new era of technology, while achieving record results in diversity and inclusion. She also championed the reinvention of hiring and education, including the explosive growth of an innovative high school program to prepare the workforce of the future in twenty-eight countries.

Through her work with the Business Roundtable, Rometty helped redefine the purpose of the corporation. Today, she serves on multiple boards and is co-chair of OneTen, an organization of companies committed to upskilling, hiring, and promoting one million Black Americans over the next ten years into family-sustaining jobs. She is also the author of Good Power: Leading Positive Change in Our Lives, Work and World.

World-renowned business educator and coach, Dr. Marshall Goldsmith is the leading expert in leadership, ranked as the #1 Executive Coach in the World and a Top Ten Business Thinker for the past eight years. As an executive educator and coach, Dr. Goldsmith helps executives understand how our beliefs and the environments we operate in can trigger negative behaviours. Through simple and practical advice, he helps them achieve and sustain positive behavioural change to drive positive impact on their organisation.

Dr. Goldsmith has written or edited 51 books which include What Got You Here Won’t Get You There and Triggers both recognized by Amazon as two of the Top 100 Leadership & Success Books Ever Written. His new bestseller, The Earned Life, is an Amazon Editor’s Choice for Book of the Year So Far in 2022.

Francis Ford Coppola is a highly renowned film director, producer, and screenwriter. He has won multiple prestigious awards, including five Academy Awards, six Golden Globe Awards, two Palmes d’Or, and a British Academy Film Award (BAFTA). Coppola’s most notable films, such as The Godfather trilogy – which transformed the gangster genre – and Apocalypse Now, have established him as one of the most significant filmmakers in American history.

Apart from his filmmaking career, Coppola has expanded his horizons into the wine and hospitality industry, establishing the Francis Ford Coppola Presents brand, which offers various resorts, cafes, and wineries located in California, Guatemala, and Belize.

He is currently working on his upcoming self-financed film Megalopolis.

Former Chairman and CEO, Hewlett-Packard Company

A passionate, articulate advocate for problem-solving, innovation, and effective leadership, Carly Fiorina was the first woman ever to lead a Fortune 50 company when she was recruited to lead Hewlett-Packard (HP) in 1999. Under her leadership, revenue grew, innovation tripled, growth quadrupled, and HP became the 11th largest company in the U.S.  

Her breadth of experience spans from marketing to manufacturing; from sales to strategic planning; from HR to R&D; from finance to engineering to supply chain and logistics. She has led teams and organizations in the private, public and social sectors. Today she is the Founder and Chairman of Carly Fiorina Enterprises, and of Unlocking Potential, a non-profit organization that invests in human potential by supporting local leaders who are solving problems in their communities and places of work.

Carla Harris is Senior Client Advisor at Morgan Stanley, responsible for increasing client connectivity and penetration to enhance revenue generation across the firm. With extensive industry experience in the technology, media, retail, telecommunications, transportation, industrial, and healthcare sectors, Harris sits on a number of financial and philanthropic boards. In 2013, she was appointed by President Barack Obama to chair the National Women’s Business Council.

Harris has been named to Fortune Magazine’s list of the 50 Most Powerful Black Executives in Corporate America, U.S. Bankers Top 25 Most Powerful Women in Finance, and is the author of Strategize to Win and Expect to Win. She is also the host of Webby Award-Winning Podcast, Access & Opportunity with Carla Harris.

Columbia Business School Professor and authority on organizational performance and diversity

Modupe Akinola is a leading authority on organizational performance and diversity, and an Associate Professor of Management at Columbia Business School. Her research on stress and discrimination has been published in numerous academic journals and media outlets, including The New York Times, Forbes, and The Economist. Akinola has received several awards, including the Rising Star Award from the Association for Psychological Science and the Best Paper Award from the Academy of Management Journal. 

She advises leaders on managing stress, diversity, equity, inclusion initiatives and women’s leadership. Before becoming an academic, Akinola was the head of diversity at Bain & Co., where she contributed to the organization’s recruitment and retention framework for people of color. She earned her Ph.D. in organizational behavior from Harvard.

Leading expert in conflict resolution and workplace dynamics

Amy Gallo’s work is focused on teaching leaders evidence-based frameworks that improve relationships and drive excellence at work.  She has emerged as a powerful new voice on topics of conflict resolution, communication and workplace dynamics.  Contributing Editor at the Harvard Business Review and author of Getting Along: How to Work with Anyone (Even Difficult People), Gallo is an authority on managing conflict in remote settings, how teams can have “smart fights,” navigating power dynamics, gender at work and more.

A graduate of both Brown and Yale University, Gallo taught at Brown and is also on the faculty of the Emotional Intelligence Coaching Certification program, recently launched by Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence.

Senior Research Scientist at the MIT Sloan School of Management

Peter Weill, Senior Research Scientist and Chairman Emeritus of the Center for Information Systems Research at the MIT Sloan School of Management, helps organisations design and leverage a powerful digital strategy so they can better compete in the 21st century. For years, he has been helping boards and executives digitally transform their institutions so they can exponentially scale business and sustain growth well into the future.

He has conducted workshops for executive committees and boards of more than 50 companies globally, and for key conferences, including the CEO summits of both Microsoft and SAP. Weill also educates leaders about the role, value and governance of digitization within enterprises and their ecosystems.

Leading Expert on Trust in the Modern World

Recognized as one of the world’s 30 most influential management thinkers, Rachel Botsman is the author of two critically acclaimed books: Who Can You Trust? and What’s Mine is Yours. She created Oxford University, Saïd Business School’s first course on trust in the digital world, and her writings on trust have been widely published in The Guardian, Financial Times, The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, and Wired.
Named one of the Top 10 most influential voices in the UK on LinkedIn, Botsman has been honoured as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and her TED talks have been viewed more than five million times. In addition, she is host of the podcast Rethink Moments, and the BBC series Money, Money, Money..

The most decorated American track and field athlete in Olympic history

Athlete, icon, entrepreneur, and advocate Allyson Felix is the most decorated American track and field athlete in Olympic history. An eleven-time Olympic medalist. Seven-time Olympic Champion. World Record Holder. She has won a mind-blowing twenty-nine global medals at the Olympics and World Championships. Felix has redefined athletics as she continues to cement her iconic status on and off the track. She is an investor in multiple companies, serves as an advisor to a female-led and focused venture fund, and is the Founder of her own shoe company for women, Saysh.

Passionate about her community, Felix serves on the Board of Directors for &Mother, Right to Play, and others, and through partnerships with Voice in Sport, the Women’s Sports Foundation, and more. Felix has received numerous accolades for her athletics and her advocacy, including being named to TIME’s 100 Most Influential People of the Year in both 2020 and 2021 as well as the Sports Illustrated Unrelenting List.

A game-changing Social Psychologist, former Professor at Harvard Business School and bestselling author, Amy Cuddy is recognised as a leading authority on the behavioural science of power, presence, and prejudice. As a Harvard Lecturer, in 2018 she won the Excellence in Teaching award.

She is the author of Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges, and her highly-cited research has been published in top academic journals and a range of internationally-known publications like The Economist, The Wall Street Journal and Fast Company. Cuddy is a passionate proponent of self-empowerment through evidence-based techniques, and her work is dedicated to motivating others to summon their best selves in approaching life’s biggest challenges.

Co-founder of Idea Farm Ventures and leading authority on Digital Transformation

Named the “guru of the consumer economy,” David Bell is a pioneer in business transformation and integrating the real world with the digital. He is author of Location Is (Still) Everything: The Surprising Influence of the Real World on How We Search, Shop and Sell in the Virtual One, award-winning academic research, and MIT Sloan Management Review bestsellers. As a Chaired Professor during a twenty-year career at The Wharton School, he started the first course on Digital Marketing and E-commerce. 

As an early stage venture capital investor and co-founder of Idea Farm Ventures, Bell has invested in and advised category-defining companies including Diapers.com, Jet.com, Bonobos, Harry’s, and Warby Parker, among numerous others, several of which have exited or been valued at over a billion dollars.

Founding CEO and President of Virgin Unite and author of Partnering

Jean Oelwang is the founding CEO and President of Virgin Unite, an entrepreneurial foundation belonging to the Virgin Group that builds collectives, incubates ideas and re-invents systems for a better world. Over the last 15 years, she has worked with partners to lead the incubation and start-up of several global initiatives, including: The Elders, The B Team, The Carbon War Room (successfully merged with the RMI) and The Branson Centres of Entrepreneurship among many others.

As part of her work over the last three decades, Oelwang has helped corporations put the wellbeing of people and the planet at their core, including working with over 25 Virgin businesses across 15 industries to help embed purpose in all they do. She is also the author of the book Partnering: Forge the Deep Connections That Make Great Things Happen.

Global Chair of Australian based Strategy/Creative Agency, Supercurious

Leading creative consultant Kevin Roberts was for over two decades the CEO at Saatchi & Saatchi, one of the most prestigious agencies worldwide, responsible for the effectiveness of several of the world’s leading advertising budgets including those of clients such as Toyota and Procter & Gamble. Among his bestselling books is Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands, a ground-breaking business book that coined the term “Lovemarks”, named one of ten Ideas of the Decade by Advertising Age.

His most recently published book is 64 shots: Leadership in a Crazy World. As the Founder of Red Rose Consulting, Roberts currently counsels business leaders and employees on creative thinking, marketing, and leadership. He currently serves as Global Chair of Australian based Strategy/Creative Agency, Supercurious.

Former Chief Marketing Officer at Nike

As former Chief Marketing Officer at Nike, Greg Hoffman is a world-class expert on creating brand experiences. During his career of more than 27 years at Nike he led teams tasked with envisioning the future of storytelling and consumer experiences for the brand. Through his leadership, Nike drove themes of equality, sustainability, and empowerment through sport in some of its most significant brand communications. Everything he lived and learnt in this period is reflected in his latest bookEmotion by Design: Creative Leadership Lessons from a Life at Nike, published in Italy by Hoepli.

Hoffman has been recognized as one of Fast Company magazine’s Most Creative People in Business, as well as featuring on Business Insider’s list of 50 Most Innovative CMO’s and AdAge’s Power Players annual lists. Today, as Founder and Principal of Modern Arena, Hoffman advises Fortune 1000 brands, startups, and nonprofits in creating brand strength, business growth, and social impact.

Former President of Tesla Motors

A visionary leader and serial entrepreneur, Jon McNeill teaches organizations how to exponentially scale businesses and drive disruptive innovation.

As former President of Tesla, he oversaw a 10-fold increase in sales from $2 billion to $20 billion in just three years. In 2018, he became COO at ride-hailing app Lyft, where he helped prepare the company to go public, growing revenue from $800 million to $2 billion in the process.

Currently, McNeill is a Managing Director at DVx Ventures, a growth-stage venture platform, and serves on several boards of companies including General Motors, Lululemon and Stash Financial.

Former United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom and Sweden

Entrepreneur and diplomat, Matthew Barzun has served as the United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom (2013-2017) and Sweden (2009-2011). In 2012, he was the Chairman of the United States National Finance Committee for Barack Obama’s re-election campaign.

Barzun began his career promoting the development of the internet, being the fourth employee of the company CNET Networks in 1993, and holding various management positions over 11 years, including that of Director of Strategy. He is also the author of The Power of Giving Away Power, in which he highlights the role of leadership in building a culture of collaboration through the distribution of power.